


Does (not) bend this way

by Liffis



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Yoga, Crack Treated Seriously, FC Augsburg - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 07:05:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13118592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liffis/pseuds/Liffis
Summary: Okay, he stumbled into it. Originally, he just signed Paul and himself up for this yoga class because, well. There was this guy.And yes, Dani is 100% aware how this is the excuse everyone gives when caught in the act, but if he had to face the music, it would be this: there was a guy whose smile made Paul smile too. And after that clusterfuck of Paul's break-up? Yeah, Daniel will grasp at every possible straw if it means to get his best friend happy again. Even if it means enduring neon-sock-clad feet every week.Or: Daniel and Paul end up with boyfriends, because of yoga. Of all things.





	Does (not) bend this way

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, the original prompt for this came up in a chat with stichflamme, as a definitely cracky premise like "omg, yoga would be so hilarious tho - imagine them doing stretching exercises: Marwin would touch his feet like it's noone's business while Dani would go 'cant get them :(((' THATD BE HILARIOUS", and. Yeah. The plotbunny grew into some kind of giant were-bunny or something.  
> Anyways! I decided to treat myself and keep on writing and upload, because, as always, more people need to see Dani Baier and Marwin Hitz, so. Have at it!
> 
> As always, also, none of this is real, all is just fiction, no money is being made.

„Sorry, Mona’s sick“, the young woman at the reception tells them, „But we have a substitute teacher, so the course will definitely happen!”

Half of Dani really wants to take this as the cue to go home. If he remembers correctly, he still has this very nice new show lined up, and he can watch it – maybe he can even try to bug Paul into watching, too –

Except.

Except Paul just made this tiny noise, and Dani knows him. He knows his best friend, and he knows this noise, and that noise says: goodbye surprise movie evening, hello yoga. 

Because that noise is Paul’s noise for That Guy.

That Guy is a bit younger than them – scratch that, too young for Dani, but whatever, Paul thinks the guy is the best thing since sliced bread. Surely the hottest thing, so. 

Yoga it is, then.

And if he’s honest – but he’ll never be, not about this, and surely not to Paul -, Dani is glad for the yoga course. Yeah, a movie evening would’ve been nice, no doubt, but…yeah, he can feel his back creak.

Even now, when he just changes into his training clothes, his back twinges faintly, making him wince. Definitely a good thing he won’t be skipping yoga today, then. 

Because he’d never admit it, and surely not to Paul, not even when drunk like a skunk, but: yoga is good for him. Considering he’d just signed himself up to make sure Paul wouldn’t skip out on the course, and, respectively, out of being in one room with That Guy – well, that’s saying something, that Dani is getting something from it. Except watching Paul snapping ramrod straight twice a week whenever That Guy so much as looks their way.

Would be hilarious, except Paul’s latest break-up is still a bit too fresh, still a bit too harsh. And Dani’s stood by his side for too much shit raining on Paul’s life to crack anything at him for this. For all it matters, That Guy is just a crush or something, whatever. He makes Paul smile, and after the disaster with That Asshole Ex, Dani will take everything and anything. 

Including taking yoga courses, apparently, just to make sure That Guy can’t pull bullshit at Paul. Even if he’d rather chop off his leg than tell Paul that – fuck, it’s not like Paul is some blushing maiden whose virtue he needs to protect. 

He just wants to have Paul’s back, and, well, in this case it had meant signing up for yoga.

And he doesn’t regret jackshit, because his back has never been better. 

The wincing he’s doing now, when sitting down on the mat, is nothing compared to what he’d been like before. Even with extensive physiotherapy, he’d been moving like an old man, even on painkillers. 

Right now, he’s on nothing except four cups of coffee, and he’s able to sit down on the floor, only with minimal pain. He’s able to move, and even able to go running again, and his back is mostly silent. Only extensive work days bother him now, and that’s so much more than he’d ever hoped for.

It definitely is worth going to yoga, twice a week, and be treated to the limitless joy of neon spandex and grandparent socks. On other people. Because even he isn’t that much into single land so far. 

He will be, in a few years, Paul says. Repeatedly and regularly, because Dani regularly has the iffs about these…clothes. Why don’t people just stop wearing them, seriously – 

Oh. 

Swiftly, he sits up straight, ignoring the twinge his back gives him, and does a double take at the substitute teacher.

Well, fuck. 

Nope, he got it right on the first view. 

Extremely good looking, as in: extremely good looking, and Dani will have so much fun to look at the guy, really, but -

They’re settled with one of these university guys, fuck. These perpetually chipper assholes who are fresh out of seminars about new methods of sports education or something, always brightly telling how many repeats are left and not taking a ‘I need to take a breath’ as any excuse. Instead, they’re always motivating. So much motivation. Perpetually happy, bright, and shiny. Which really, really, really destroys all the nice view the guy could ever possibly offer. Which he does, but Dani hates plastic chipperness.

Paul next to him is suspiciously quiet still, so he hasn’t seen the guy yet. If he had, he’d groan like Daniel just has. 

“Paul! Put your blue balls on hold and look what we got.”he hisses, trying to get Paul to react without actually elbowing him.

Paul whips around, an acerbic answer already on his lips, but then -

He sees the guy rolling out his navy yoga mat in front of the whole course.

Promptly, Paul slumps down with a dull thump.

“Fuck, did they hire someone from sport science?”

“I just hope he won’t order us to ‘find our inner midst’ or some bull.”, Dani just murmurs back.

He doesn’t have the highest hopes, though, and with every second, they’re ever falling. The guy hits all the check marks: looks to be in his middle to late twenties, perfectly clean shaven, and with a smile that would make grandmas pinch his cheeks and invite him for Sunday lunches. And probably out to torture them all with what he’s learned in his classes. 

Six or seven years ago, when he’d been around that very same age bracket, he definitely wouldn’t have minded as much, because hey, guess what, sports students did tend to be horribly flexible and athletic, and, well. Amazing sex, really. Some clichés were, god bless them, true in the very best ways. 

But now he’s thirty-three, with a stable job he actually loves, but that still tires him out after a day like this. Regular seven hours plus overtime – filled with tiresome meetings and even more tiresome phone calls; everything he dislikes about his job piled in one day. 

What he needs is an extensive yoga class with Mona, because she’s the one person who can singlehandedly save crap days like this. She’s calm, almost serene, as she guides them through more and more pretzelling of their bodies, in such a way that by the end of class he can bend in ways he thought impossible before. And, the best thing, the more he follows her guiding through the movements, the thoughts go away, because he is settling in his body, in the moment. Calming down. Just breathing, as he feels his body, aware of it with every movement. By the end of it, he can roll up his mat, and feel good. Relaxed. His back will be better, too, not cramping in pain anymore.

But now he won’t get any of it, because instead of Mona, he got this guy. 

“Breathe”, Paul quietly orders him to, under his breath. 

Dani’s not sure what his face is doing in response, but going by the laughter bubbling in Paul’s throat, and the way Paul is biting his lip to keep quiet, it must be something.

“Okay, everyone.”, the guy speaks up and the whole course falls quiet, “I’m Marwin, Mona’s substitute for today.”

Dani sits up a bit straighter – as much as he can, without his back shooting pain through him.

The guy – Marwin – actually has a nice voice. Low, and very calm. As in: extremely calm, even more than Mona. 

“We will start with a relaxation phase.”

Shuffling and ruffling, they all lie down, and Dani winces slightly when stretching out. His body slips into the usual position: legs stretched out, feet a shoulders’ width apart, arms by his side. His eyes close almost immediately. 

Hopefully the guy is good at this. Mona has settled the bar very high.

“I want you to lie down comfortably, adjust your position, if you are not comfortable. Breathe through your nose and take in your current situation. Feel where your body touches the ground.”, Marwin starts.

He is talking very slowly, and Dani does feel irritated at it – in the beginning. Because he doesn’t know when the guy will drop off into silence, his words come out this slowly, and some part of him wants to shake Marwin, to get him to talk in a somewhat normal speed. 

But god help him, he will go out of this room relaxed and with his body stretched and exercised as much as he can, and if it means listening to this man and matching the speed of his running thoughts to the drawling voice, he will do it. 

It takes all of his concentration to not let his thoughts wander. Marwin is speaking slowly, more slowly than he’s used to, because Mona had kept a certain speed. She hadn’t let their thoughts wander off, always managing to keep them all with her, effortlessly.

With Marwin, it’s hard work. It’s not easy, to stay with him and do what he says, at the same time. Even though what he tells them is just relaxing themselves, making their body relax against the mat. 

But slowly, he does feel himself – unspool. Tension slips from him, because, well, it’s impossible to feel anything else if he’s so concentrated on Marwin’s voice and his own body. He feels heavier with it, but also better. His breath starts matching the rhythm of Marwin’s talking. Slow and deep, and it feels like it’s flowing into his whole body, in and out, like a tide.

When Marwin calls them back to the present, Dani feels like diving up from a deep, deep ocean within himself. Blinking up at the ceiling, shrouded in soft amber glows from the gentle lighting, he feels…relaxed. Which isn’t what he expected.

His body doesn’t quite feel like a huge lump – it only does so after class has finished -, but it’s already on a good way to get there. 

Next to him, Paul groans slightly when sitting up. 

“We could do more of this”, he quietly says, and he really must be relaxed as well, because his voice is heavily tinged with his Dutch accent. Which it only does when he’s not quite awake and alert.

Dani shares the sentiment, wholeheartedly. That relaxation period felt better than an actual nap.

“Alright”, Marwin says, “Please stand up, we’ll start standing and work our way down to the mat.”

It takes the whole course a bit to follow the instructions – Dani can count at least one older woman who’s staying down on the mat a bit too long to be anything but still slightly asleep. It happens. Has happened to Dani himself actually several times already, especially in the beginning, when he’d been new to yoga. By now he can stay awake and follow the speeches during relaxation periods.

Once they’re all up and standing, Marwin starts.

Soon, Dani realizes: okay, Marwin really isn’t what he believed him to be. Oh, yes, Marwin is indeed merciless. But he’s like Mona, a bit: merciless but not in a mean way. More – well, Marwin sees when someone is struggling. Sees it immediately, and while the rest of the course is completing their set of exercises, he walks around and helps out. Those who struggle with an exercise, not quite getting it right, he gently guides into the right position. His voice barely rises above a murmur when he does so, and he never loses his calm. Nor does he help out those who obviously shake while holding a position, which immediately books him a lot of bonus points in Dani’s book.

The exercises Marwin has picked out are demanding, and above Mona’s usual set. Mona has a set of favourite exercises that have everyone sweating, the whole body worked out extensively, by the end.

But Marwin’s exercises have them all dripping with sweat by what Dani guesstimates to be only half of class over. He’s not sure, because he’s too busy trying not to fall over while folding himself around his left leg to actually look at the clock and check. 

And then Marwin calls them to That Exercise. 

While Dani is still breathing heavy from what he decided to call the bird pretzel – the position is called some-bird-or-another, but is actually extremely wobbly pretzelling -, Marwin does…this. As in: the most hated exercise by Dani’s opinion. He hates stretches, hates stretching out his legs. Sitting, he can manage, because yoga has made him at least flexible enough to touch his ankles with the tip of his fingers. 

Standing and stretching downwards however – that’s completely different. Well, at least that’s the opinion of his body. For some reason Dani can’t touch the ground, let alone his feet. Not even the tip of his toes. Nothing. He always stands there, shaking with exertion, clutching his shins like they’ll pop off afterwards.

For some reason everyone – including Mona, and Paul, but also himself – are convinced: he should be able to pull that off. His legs are short enough, anyways, so. 

Doesn’t matter. 

He always tries to get around this particular exercise. 

Looks at Marwin, doing the exercise and telling them what to look out for. How to feel for a stretch of their backs -

Back. 

No, fuck. 

Okay, really, maybe not today? Not this exercise at least? 

Dani gulps and really tries not to think of how ridiculous he’d look if he was to fall over, cramping in pain, when attempting this exercise. Because he doesn’t feel like his body will be able to pull it off, not right now, not even as relaxed as he is.

“You okay?”, Marwin asks, suddenly next to him.

The others are dutifully following his instructions, bending over and slowly getting up again. Only Dani isn’t.

“Back pain”, he just answers. 

“Problems with your spinal discs?”

“No, just a desk job.”

Marwin nods. 

“Do you think you can attempt it if I guide you? I will help you bending as much as you can, without being in pain.”

And Marwin puts his hand on Dani’s back, as if ready to guide him into the position.

“I can try, I guess”, he says, without actually adding how much more likely it is he’ll fall over. 

God, hopefully he won’t fall over. That would be the worst, really. 

“Alright. Put your feet wider apart, until you have a safe stance.” – and that’s a bit different than how the others do it, because they do it with their legs closed and bending over.

“Now, bend, but only as much as you can take it. My hand will stay on your back, and I am by your side. If you feel wobbly or unstable, I can hold you. Otherwise: if you are in pain, please get up immediately, but slowly. Don’t keep the position if it pains you.”

Dani nods and bends over. Slowly. With every centimetre he lowers his head, he expects the pain to shoot through him. It doesn’t. It wells up slowly, cropping up slow enough he can feel it, but he –

“Now, stop and hold.”, Marwin quietly orders him, his hand splayed wide on Dani’s back.

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Holidays to you all!


End file.
